Chapter 18: Bound but not Gagged

Silvana banged on Bruce’s front door.

The lights were off in the house, and she shouted, “Bruce?! Kurt? Please open up. It’s me.”

Tears laced her eyes, and as she continued to pound her fist to the door, she clenched her father’s mysterious journal with her other hand.

If what she had read was true, then she didn’t have much time.

“Bruce, please!” Silvana sobbed.

After knocking on the front door and throwing stones at each window of the dark house, Silvana crumpled to the grassy floor beside dead leaves, and she cried loudly to herself, grasping her father’s journal and screaming out in despair.

She called Bruce, then Amelia, both over and over, until she had no battery left, and her phone simply died.

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Back at her house, Solaris entered the cellar, taking each step slowly with his cane. Inside and restrained on a metal table with thick straps was a struggling man with a white sheet over him. His hands, chest, and legs were clamped into place with massive metal shackles that sparked with crimson electricity, and even wiggling his toes sent shockwaves of excruciating pain throughout his body.

The shackles electrocuted the man as Solaris shut the stone door behind them both, and Solaris’s seals of witchcraft on the door and walls radiated red.

Smoke rose from under the sheet as the electrocution of the confined man continued, and his burly feet tried their best to kick from underneath the sheet, and the man hollered out in torturous agony.

Solaris went to the man’s side and pulled down the sheet.

“Please, Mr. Winters,” Solaris said. “This room exists from binding magic. Nobody will hear you, and nobody can see you.”

“Silvana!” Bruce shouted, but he was quickly fried by the electricity once more.

“Stubborn, just like your species,” Solaris sighed, wheeling over a tiny aluminum table with sharp surgery equipment on it.

Bruce huffed with shaking breaths. He looked Solaris forcefully in the eyes and panted, “It doesn’t need to be like this. We can figure out a way for us all to work together.”

Solaris shook his head and lifted a large, elaborate knife with a white handle made of carved pearl.

He inspected the clean, curved blade and said, “I’m afraid, Mr. Winters, that no werewolf, especially not the likes of you, will be a Guardian.”

For a second, Solaris’s face gleamed in the reflection of the knife, and he added, “So long as I am alive, I will be the Guardian.”

“The werewolves will come for you if you do this. They won’t rest until they’ve figured out what happened to me.”

Solaris chuckled. “Do you know how Cecilia Duponte became strong enough to start the war between our species?”

Solaris cusped Bruce’s hand in his and glided the blade across Bruce’s knuckles and said, “She cast forbidden magic that brought her back from the brink of death.”

Solaris stepped back and coughed wildly into the sleeve of his silk shirt. In that moment, Bruce could see that beyond the facade of brutal mastermind, Solaris was a sick man frightened of his impending doom.

“Solaris, we can get you help,” Bruce said. “We can do this, together.”

Solaris finished wheezing, then spat at the ground. He straightened himself out and continued, “I will get help.”

He slammed the knife between Bruce’s fingers so hard that it pierced the metal table and stuck inside.

“What you don’t realize, Mr. Winters, is the power that your species holds. And like Cecilia Duponte, I’ll extract the claws of a Silverclaw Alpha, then use them in the same witchcraft that made her so extraordinarily powerful.”

“Listen to me,” Bruce began, eyeing the knife beside him.

But Solaris would hear none of it.

“What I need you to understand,” Solaris said, “Is that you are making a great sacrifice to the people around you, and to the very city you wish to protect.

“You take my claws, you’ll kill me,” Bruce spewed.

“Yes,” Solaris said grimly. “And since I don’t expect you to just hand them over, I’ll be tearing them from your fingers the moment you turn.”

“Think about Silvana,” Bruce said.

Solaris laughed, then caught a cough in the back of his throat, grit his teeth, and held the flaming in his throat back.

“She’s all I think about,” Solaris said firmly. “You and your species can’t be trusted to clean the shit from their fur, let alone protect people from the supernatural. If you think the spirit gates have opened recently, you’ve got no idea what’s to come in even more devastating storms of the crimson lightning.”

“There was a time when we all, witches and werewolves, fought against such evil as one,” Bruce said.

Solaris tugged the knife from the table and set it down next to the other surgical tools with a loud clatter.

“In a few days, it’ll be a full moon. Whether you like it or not, you’ll transform, and my magic will restrain you, no matter how much you try and escape. When that full moon comes, I’ll be seeing you again.”

Solaris exited the cellar, then cast his secretive magic once more, causing the cellar doors to completely disappear.

And with them, any traces of Bruce’s captivity.